To start up an extruder it is necessary first to run it in a warm-up. Because the plastic material is relatively expensive it is customary to granulate the spew as it emerges from the extruder head during the warm-up and recycle it into the extruder. In order to allow the spew to cool and solidify before it reaches the granulator it is fed onto a conveyor belt from the extruder head and travels along the conveyer belt which deposits it into the granulator where it is chopped up for re-use.
Recycled plastic material must be free of impurities and this is difficult to achieve with spew because the molten plastic tends to adhere to the conveyer belt and pick up foreign material of the belt as well as damaging it. Various materials have been used to coat the conveyor belt but with limited success and/or uneconomical cost.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for conveying hot melt plastic material from an extruder to a granulator.